“A SPY simply must communicate with his master,” the foremost American hunter of spies told me. Then he added, fervently; “Thank God!”

For the very act of sending his precious stolen information to the country he serves, places the war time spy in deadly danger. The “spy wireless” by which he sends it, is his strength only if it be safely hidden; once discovered, it is his weakness, betraying him to death at dawn before a firing squad. Through that fatal weakness, American spy hunters recently have detected an astounding number of spies for foreign countries, here among us, stealing our defense secrets.

YOUR Uncle Sam is not only a first class fighting man, but he’s the world’s greatest tailor, too.

In addition, he is a haberdasher and style dictator and decides what the best dressed man will wear. Just now, the fashion is running strongly toward uniforms. Uncle Sam’s activities in procuring garments for some 4,000,000 soldiers produces figures which are easy enough to read, but are so huge that no human mind can envision the separate articles.

Take a single item, like wool. If you discover this winter when you buy a suit or overcoat that it isn’t quite up to former standards, remember that one soldier in his first year of service is issued necessary clothing containing a minimum of 200 pounds of wool.

THE alarm sounds for general quarters. Across the steel decks of the mighty new battle wagon the bluejacket races on the double to his gun station in a turret.

He takes his appointed place near the monster weapon and waits, tense and overwrought while the rest of the gun crew tumble into the turret. A sudden hush falls on the scene and he notices that the other sailors are poised as taut as stretched strings. It’s like playing football on the high school team, back in Tennessee. They’re a team waiting for the quarterback to call signals.

Projectors that are direct descendants of the parlor lanterns of a generation ago are now being used to train rookies in the mechanics of modern motor vehicles.

They are used with what are known as “educational reading slidefilms,” because this has been found to be the speediest and most effective means of training mechanics. And speed is necessary, because by this coming June the Army expects to have 190,000 motor vehicles.

MODERN total war has the bewildering effect of changing our values, eliminating many of the things which seemed essential in peacetime and giving a terrific boost to the importance of others.

Microfilm is in the latter class.

Strangely, these little films have now attained gigantic value because of their small size. They are suddenly mighty for the very reason that they are midgets. Even the larger type is only as wide as a man’s thumb from tip to first joint. The smaller microfilm might be compared roughly to the size of the nail on that section of the thumb. Yet, they are doing a Herculean task.

THE American civilian is recovering gradually from the shock of his country’s complete entry into the greatest war in history and its necessary sacrifices. Production of passenger cars ceased months ago, and the public is getting used to the idea that the family auto must last for the duration, possibly longer.

It is not premature to talk of the postwar possibilities in this field of manufacture, for certainly it is one of the country’s largest, and one upon which the people are definitely dependent.

Civilians can join in one of the soldier’s favorite pastimes—identifying combat aircraft—with playing cards that have silhouettes of Allied and enemy planes on their faces. The United States planes are spades, British are hearts, German are diamonds, and Japanese are clubs. In the corners are the “pip” signs. The airplane card idea was suggested by officers of the Third Air Corps, Tampa, Fla., who have been conducting classes in aircraft identification.

NATURE camouflages fish by making their bodies in a two-toned pattern, light on the bottom to blend with illumination from the surface and dark on top to merge into the dusk of the depths. She protects birds in a similar manner. She mottles the coats of deer so they are almost invisible in a forest. She makes insects look like twigs and gives butterflies the form and coloration of leaves and flowers.

TOILING in the icy depths of Scapa Flow, the broad landlocked harbor in the Orkney Isles, north of Scotland, British engineers and divers today are enacting what probably will be hailed some day as the greatest salvaging epic in the history of the sea.

Though the world at large hears but little of their feats, they are dragging to the surface one by one of the giants of Germany’s once proud High Seas Fleet, now battered rusted hulks, which have lain for 17 years fathoms-deep beneath the swirling waters of Scapa. The iron from some of those very ships is being used today by the modern Germany of Adolf Hitler in the great European armaments race.

ANEW submachine gun which shoots .45 caliber automatic , pistol bullets at the rate of 500 a minute is now being- turned out by the Harrington and Richardson Arms Company, of Worcester, Mass., at the rate of 1,000 guns a day.

Although in its present form the gun weighs only 6-1/2 pounds as compared with the 9-3/4-pound Thompson submachine gun and the U.S. Army’s new 9-1/2 pound Garand rifle, the inventor, Eugene G. Reising, is confident that eventually he will cut its weight down close to the five pounds which the War Department considers ideal for parachute troops, air infantry, motorcycle riders, and the close-up work of mechanized units.